The provision of health care services in the United States has become the focus of much attention. With the costs of medical malpractice insurance spiraling, and the payments being made to health care providers from benefit providers, including private and government insurers being reduced continually, health care providers are finding it necessary to get payments for all the services they actually render.
Unfortunately, many health care providers are not receiving compensation for the services they render. This could be due to a number of factors, such as patients not having the ability to pay for the services, and/or not having any medical payment system or insurance. In other instances, medical care service providers submit a request to determine if a patient is eligible for coverage under a private or government insurance plan, but are told the patient is not eligible for coverage. Often, payment for services rendered is denied due to incorrect data entry about a patient and/or the service rendered, through failure to associate the information with the correct patient record in the benefit provider's database, or other misunderstandings or mis-associations.
For medical care service providers, being denied payment for services rendered is problematic, and can, in some cases, mean the difference between profitability and a business that does not show a profit. Typically, such claims which are classified as not eligible for reimbursement are written off as bad debt for which collection cannot be achieved. Ultimately, these costs are either passed along to other patients by means of cost increases, or the care provided is cut back to save or reduce costs.
Accordingly, a continuing search has been directed to the development of methods which can help medical care service providers maximize identification of patients who are eligible for private or government medical insurance so the service providers can be reimbursed for claims.
Therefore, what is needed is a system and/or method for helping to efficiently identify claims for which the patients are eligible for health care benefits, which can be paid to the health care provider.